


The Gang: A Pack of Animals

by DarkFairytale



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Background Relationships, Background Slash, Character Study, Crack, Drug Abuse, Drug Use, Frank gets high, Gen, Hinted MacDennis, Homophobic Language, Lots of gay sex references, One-Sided Attraction, Relationship Study, Season/Series 13 Spoilers, canon typical language, the gang being the gang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-23 12:46:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16159244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkFairytale/pseuds/DarkFairytale
Summary: Frank gets high and starts seeing some weird shit. Froggy's got nothing on this.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is largely a character and relationship study of the gang; through Frank's fucked-up eyes. I have tagged MacDennis, Chardee and CharMac as relationships as each relationship does get some consideration. Hope you enjoy!

_**5:34pm** _

  
_**On a Monday** _

  
_**Philadelphia, PA** _

 

Frank’s been huffing whatever Charlie put in the paint can for the last ten minutes. It’s strong stuff. Charlie knows his chemicals.

“Hey Dennis, you know you always said that a power bottom could generate most of the power from the bottom?”

Frank knows that this conversation he’s hearing ain’t any product of the mix he’s inhaling. This conversation is just one hundred percent Mac.

“And?” Dennis asks, impatient. He’s got less patience for Mac whenever Mac displays his all out, accepting of his faggot – no, wait, _gay_ , now, no hate crime here, no sir - self. There’s gotta be reasons for Dennis’ lack of tolerance for gay Mac, but Frank doesn’t really care. “What of it?”

“Well, I didn’t realise how much power a power bottom could have. Like, asserting dominance from the top is near impossible, dude.”

“Off all the topics of conversation in the world, the one I would want to hear least is you talking about your sex life,” Dennis’ tone is sharp, fierce.

“No, no,” Dee’s interrupting now, nothing unusual there, twittering away, “Don’t stop him. He’s banging dudes now, and this is my area of expertise.”

A snort. “If you _had_ an area of expertise, that wouldn’t be it.”

Mac barrels on like they haven’t said anything, “Well, I figure, maybe I should try being a power bottom.  Because it is like, way more manly than I thought, bro, because of all the power. You have to be super strong and badass and dominant, actually, and I wanna try it. Do you think I should try it?”

“I don’t care if you try it,” Dennis says, bitter. He’s been bitter a lot recently. With Mac, mainly. A lot more scratching going on. “What I find hilarious is the fact that you think that a position holds any sort of power. It’s the personalities that hold the power, not the position. Haven’t I taught you anything? The reason you aren’t a dominant top, Mac, is because you are clearly not dominant. You can try being on the bottom if you want, but I highly doubt you’d be dominant there either.”

“Fuck you Dennis!” Mac’s shouting now, surprise, surprise. “I am super dominant! Look how jacked I am! Look at all this mass! This amount of mass couldn’t be more dominant!”

“Mass has nothing to do with it.”

“It has everything to do with it!”

“So you think now you’re no longer the size of a twink or a twunk, or when you were that disgusting fat man, that just like that you could now be a jock? Or even a goddamn wolf?”

It’s weird that Frank actually knows what they are talking about. Dee’s lectured him on this before. Dennis also knows a surprising amount about it too.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Mac’s freaking.

“The types of gay men, Jesus Christ, how do you not know anything about this?”

“Well, I could be a wolf!”

“You can’t just choose one because it sounds cool,” Dee reprimands chirpily.

Dennis snorts again, “And that would be highly unlikely anyway. Wolves are sexually aggressive and you have just confirmed that you are no such thing.”

“I am! I can be!" Mac yaps. "Charlie! Hey, Charlie!”

Frank looks hazily over to where Charlie is emerging from the basement, covered in the usual grime, his hair sticking up in all directions, he looks pointier, but that could be because Frank’s sight of him is wavering like a mirage.

“What?” Charlie asks Mac.

“I could be a wolf couldn’t I, Charlie?”

“Sure you could, bro. Rock, flag and eagle.”

“How many times…that isn’t an argument!” Dennis’ voice is raised.

“Of course it is,” Mac scoffs as Charlie agrees and fist bumps him.

“Wolves are badass and very American. Eagles and wolves are cool! Mac could be a wolf.”

“You are not a part of this. You have no idea what we are talking about!” Dennis is verging on that hysterical screech he sometimes does. “Hey! Don’t brandish your filthy rat stick at me! What the hell is that on it?”

“Duh, rat blood.”

“Get that disgusting thing out of my face! Go back to your Charlie Work! Go! Go!” Dennis shoos Charlie off and Charlie scurries away. "And you..." Dennis turns back to Mac again. Or at least Frank thinks he does. The concoction in the paint can in his hands has just made Dennis’ head turn a whole lot more degrees than it probably should. “You could never be a wolf. More of a dog. And not even a big, aggressive dog. A small dog with big sad eyes that makes you want to pity it.”

Mac’s thrown a bottle against the wall and is jumping to his feet, barking threats at Dennis.

“That was real catty, Dennis,” Dee sing-songs over Mac’s racket.

“Shut up, bird,” Dennis hisses loudly.

The tension breaks and everyone but Dee laughs, her feathers ruffled as per but nobody cares. Easy as that.

Frank takes another deep breath of paint and oil and glue and whatever else Charlie added to his potion. The man is a wizard. When he isn’t bashing rats. No wait, that's not right. Charlie isn't a wizard. He's a king. King of the rats.

“My god.”

Frank blinks, confused, because there’s another voice there. And oh yeah, he’d forgotten; there’s a couple that walked in for a drink about half an hour ago.

“You got a problem, lady?” Mac asks, defensive, hackles still up.

“You people…you people are a bunch of animals!”

The gang bursts into laughter, howling and cackling and squeaking, before as a unit they coldly shut her down and manically send the couple packing. Frank huffs a bit more from the paint can.

“Hey Frank?”

Frank blinks again.

Frank looks down.

There’s a rat at his feet looking up at him.

Frank stares at the rat.

“Charlie?” He asks it.

“Yeah, Frank,” says the rat, “I didn’t even know you were still sitting here. How much of that stuff have you huffed, dude? You only need one or two snorts to be set.”

Frank stares at the rat. Then he looks up. There’s a dog pacing by the door. There’s a haughty looking cat perched on one of the barstools. There’s a large flightless bird behind the bar.

“Awh shit,” says Frank.

 

 _TITLE MUSIC_  
  
**The Gang: A Pack of Animals**


	2. Chapter 2

“Oh shit, dude, I hadn’t even noticed he was still here,” the dog with Mac’s voice trots away from being Sherriff at the door towards the rat at Frank’s feet.

“That’s what I just said!” Charlie rat agrees. “He must have been sat here huffing this whole time.”

“He looks pretty out of it.”

“Yeah well, he’s been doing the whole chemicals thing long enough to know when he should stop,” Dennis cat says, looking down at them from his barstool, unsympathetic, “The man is disgusting. He has no limit.”

“He’s looking at us funny,” the giant bird squints at him from over the bar. An ostrich? Maybe an emu? Definitely Deandra.

“He’s probably in some kind of trance,” says the rat. “Been there before.”

“But he’s staring right at us,” the bird argues. “He’s seeing us.”

“He probably has no idea who he is at this point, let alone who we are,” the cat sniffs. “Leave him there. He’ll come back eventually. Maybe.”

The dog ignores the cat’s command and cocks his head, still looking intently at Frank. “Hey Frank?”

“What do you want, Mac?” Frank says.

The dog blinks. “Did he…did he just bark at me?” The dog begins leaping about, yapping. “Did he just bark at me because of what Dennis said before?”

“Hey,” the rat somehow manages to keep the dog back. “He’s out of it, Mac, he’s out of it. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

Charlie. Frank can always rely on Charlie. He tells him so and reaches out in an attempt to pat Charlie on the head. The rat ducks and the dog slaps Frank’s hands away from the rat.

“Quit grabbing, dude!” the rat protests.

“Let’s just leave him,” the dog decides. “He’ll be alright eventually.”

And because today is apparently one of those 70% of times in which Charlie thinks Mac makes the best decisions, Charlie nods in agreement.

The cat rolls its eyes because sometimes the rat won’t follow his command unless the dog does it first, and the dog has been slipping out of the cat’s control more often recently.

“Goddamn you, Mac!” Frank tries to protest, because they shouldn’t leave him. This is not ok. The gang have become animals. Paddy’s is turning into a goddamn zoo. They can’t just let him alone.

But they can. And they will. No man left behind, Frank’s ass.

The rat and the dog are frowning at him again.

“He still barking?” the bird asks, now pouring herself a drink with her long spindly clawed legs, having lost interest in Frank half a conversation back.

“Yeah. And he squeaked at Charlie.”

“Yeah, just leave him,” the bird dismisses. “Classic Frank, right?”

The dog laughs and bounds back towards the bar, jumping onto a barstool. “Yeah, classic Frank.”

The rat sniffs at Frank for a second before taking the paint can from him. He puts the can aside and scampers over to another barstool. Where they all commence a brand new conversation and promptly begin ignoring Frank again. Not even noticing that they have become a goddamn rat, bird, cat and dog.

Typical.

Frank used to command respect. Frank used to be the Warthog at Atwater Capital and in all his businesses. He is still the Warthog sometimes, when a scheme calls for it. All money, no nonsense. But he knows, deep down, that underneath all that lays the heart of him. Froggy.

As he reaches out to try and unsuccessfully retrieve the paint can he catches a glimpse of webbed hands. Awh shit. The gang aren’t the only ones turned animal. Frank’s the frog kid for real, now.

Maybe he is a frog, maybe he always has been. He likes the sewers, he likes hopping from one scheme to another and quickly away from his businesses once they’re fucked or he grows bored. Froggy’s like the other side to Frank that he only really accepted since joining the gang and letting himself go wild.

He was the Warthog when he married his whore wife, Barbara. But maybe that’s why they didn’t really work; she could see the frog underneath. She was a cat, through and through, like Dennis, and maybe she could smell the truth of the frog, see it with her cat-like vision. How Frank ever thought he was the biological father of Dee and Dennis looking back seems crazy; Dennis turned out to be a cat like his mother, and Dee, well she ain’t no frog, even if she can retch and gag like one when she’s doing her stand-up. Maybe Bruce Mathis, that dumb shit that fritters away money on _charities_ , is more of the bird that Dee got hers from. He flew from Barbara’s evil whore clutches well enough, reached majestic birdy heights; heights that Dee’s got no hopes for, because her cat mother and cat brother kept her down and the weight of the Aluminium Monster kept her flightless and bitter.

Frank ain’t nothing like birdy Bruce Mathis. Frank only gives money to charities when he can get something out of it; he gives money to animal charities so that he can wear leather jackets to the events and mock their cause. And until now, his history with the frog kid and that intense connection he shared with that rabbit in the middle of the woods were the only times he’s really believed animals to have much of a soul, much of anything, really.

Until now, of course. Because he’s seeing a whole lot more of them right now.

He looks to the rat for answers, because when it comes to living a life of unapologetically fucked up, Charlie’s the expert. In fact, Charlie could very well be more Frank’s biological spawn than Dennis and Deandra. Frank’s frog mixed with Charlie’s sexy dormouse of a mother? Yeah, Frank reckons you could get a rat from that.

There’s something deeper here, maybe, Frank wonders. Maybe he’s seeing this for a reason. Just like he’s the frog kid, the animals sitting at the bar of Paddy’s Pub are almost eerily fitting to their specific creature.

He knows that the school bullies used to call Charlie and Mac Dirtgrub and Ronnie the Rat, but that’s because those jackasses didn’t know the first thing about either of them. Frank knows them. Frank sees that Mac may have been a snitch, but he ain’t a real rat, Charlie is the rat. King of the rats. He might know bird law and likes to stick cat fur to himself, but Charlie’s still a rat. He just does that shit because he’s comfortable with not being normal. Frank remembers the time that the gang tried to catch the rat terrorizing the bar but they couldn’t outsmart it; Charlie’s the most self-aware of any of them, comfortable enough with who he is to catch the gang by surprise and outwit them a number of times. Only the King of the Rats can catch rats. Charlie likes the sewers, he knows them well. Sure, he eats cat food and sticks fur to himself now and again and claims to be an expert on cats, but Frank reckons that that’s because the Waitress is a cat and Charlie once wanted nothing more than the Waitress to love him back. The Waitress is a cat who fancies other cats, like Dennis, and looks down on rats like Charlie. But The Waitress has mange or something and Dennis doesn’t want her, and Charlie doesn’t actually know much about a cat’s mind. He couldn’t even get the stuck one out of Dee’s wall, or truly help spiders to talk with cats; he can’t communicate with cats likes he thinks he can, just like with the Waitress. But like the back and forth of Tom and Jerry but in a fucked up kind of reverse, the rat finally got the cat he wanted, but now he’s the one that’s running because she wants his constant attention. Weird, eh? Apparently Charlie and Deandra once banged too; look where knowing bird law and hugging a pigeon too hard gets a rat. It ain’t pretty.

And sure, Deandra ain’t a pretty little bird, she’s a big, dumb, flightless one that caws for attention and then squawks under the pressure when she actually gets any mass attention. Her and Charlie get on well most of the time; his knowing bird law probably helps, and they’ve actually worked quite a few schemes together. They are a surprising pair, the rat and the bird. Not as surprising as that time Pappy McPoyle’s bird attacked from under his hat, but pretty surprising. And Frank can’t deny that Charlie and Sweet Dee are far more like-minded than Charlie and the Waitress. Dee and Mac, on the other hand, have also done a couple of schemes but they normally end in chaos because dogs and birds are a questionable combination. Whenever she teams up with Dennis they either play nice – evil twins to the max – or Dennis ends up toying with her; cat and bird to a T. Just look what happened when Charlie and Dee sent birds into Dee’s wall to lure the cats out; they got devoured and the cats stayed in the damn wall, stuck in their ways.

The gang all dressed as birds once – eagles – and it didn’t go well for them. It didn’t do well to try and follow Deandra’s example. Dressing as birds gets you into trouble and very near cases of mistaken identities and pregnancies at drunken Halloween parties.

No. The one the gang seems to try and emulate the most, by past experience, is Dennis. Dennis often tries to encourage the gang to be a bit more like him. Teaching them the D.E.N.N.I.S system, trying to mould them the way he wants them to be and most recently, trying to get them to be more careful with their sexual harassment in that goddamn seminar. He’s influential to an extent and they have all tried to be a cat in one way or another; Charlie with his cat fur, Mac wearing those creepy cat-eye contacts in Charlie’s musical and Dee demanding to dress as a cat in the reconstruction of Maureen Ponderosa’s suspected-murder. Speaking of which; even Dennis’ wife turned into a goddamn cat. Literally. Turns out, Dennis is only compatible with a rare few of his kind. He liked Agent Jack Bauer well enough, but as a companion. He finds the Waitress mangy, he found Maureen unbearable and strange. He tends to enjoy the company of other species the most, even if he does spit and scratch and screech at them a lot and sometimes consider himself a Golden God above them. He thought he was king of the minions at school, but liked to hang out with the rat and the dog under the bleachers. He still hangs out with the bird, either a double-act or a disaster, he still hangs out with the rat, either a surprising match of wits or just pure exasperation. And take Mac, as a prime example. The cat and the dog are roommates and it’s either co-dependant harmony or total chaos with no in-between. Dennis likes to _give_ affection; he’ll hold Mac’s shoulders, he’ll hold Mac’s face, he’ll get up real close and purr his instructions in Mac’s face when he wants to manipulate him or get Mac to do something for him. But he doesn’t like to receive affection much, not when he isn’t giving it. He’ll shrug the dog off, he’ll hiss his insults and get his claws out. It’s all hot and cold, love and hate with Dennis and his treatment of the others. Classic cat.

Mac, meanwhile, is classic dog. He’ll take the affection he gets and will be thrilled with it. Affection from anyone, really. That’s the thing about Mac. He’s pretty pathetically needy and desperate for love and praise. It’s what the weight and muscle gain and loss – all the cultivating and harvesting - is all about, isn’t it? The size thing is probably also because Mac wants to be a Rottweiler but he’s not. Maybe those bullies did get it half-right with Ronnie the Rat, because Mac’s more of a Rat Terrier than he is a big dog. He wants to be a Rottweiler like his dad, or have some kind of love from the grunting pug-like dog that is his ashtray of a mother, but it ain’t happening. Classic case of neglected dog. It’s all given Mac his Napoleon Complex, a little angry dog with a quick temper, lashing out and yapping about being good at karate and being badass. Sure, he can lift Dee or kid right off the ground now his muscles aren’t all glamour, but that don’t mean shit if his heart is still pure puppy. Which it is. One look at Mac’s dopey puppy face can tell you that, still just desperate for notice and appreciation.  

Mac’s got a complex history with dogs. He loved Poppins, and is kind of like Poppins in the way he can get beat down and still come springing back, but he let Dennis Jr. die and fed him to Dennis, and he used to kick dogs with Charlie when they were kids, but Frank’s got an answer to that too; Mac had been a self-loathing closet case so long that he had a love-hate relationship with dogs, because he did with himself. So yeah, Frank reckons Mac’s a rat terrier that’s as shit at catching rats as he is at being the doorman of Paddy’s. Mac and Charlie were always a dysfunctional pair, the terrier and the rat, best friends since childhood, but even Frank’s gotta admit that they’ve probably got the purest relationship of the lot. The cat and the bird strutted off to college and the white trash dog and rat stayed home together, the cat flounced off to North Dakota and the dog and the rat stayed in Philly, together. Threw rocks at trains and had their bikes stolen. They grew up together and they fake-died together. It could be enough to make a frog or cat jealous sometimes, because they’re ride or die, a package deal, Mac and Charlie, and they understand each other. They have a long, unbreakable bond, those two. They can wind each other up, but they can calm each other down. And then you put a cat amongst the critters and watch them scramble.

Holy shit. Frank blinks. This concoction’s making him think way too deep. It’s like being back with Dee’s shrink again, cracking Frank open, except this time Frank’s done it to himself with too many huffs of toxic garbage and it’s making him see animals.

Not his fault though, when Paddy’s is a goddamn zoo at the best of times. Hell, the gang literally call Dee a bird, Charlie King of the Rats, Maureen really was a fucking cat, and then there’s Gail the Snail and Rickety Cricket, though Cricket acts more like a homeless mangy mutt than anything else. What’s Frank to do when all the people around him are as much goddamn animals as he is Froggy?

The McPoyles are like snakes – milk snakes – Frank snorts a laugh. They like the humid heat. They are milkey in more ways than one. They slither around the cat, torment the rat with their grinning incestuous teeth, they lick at the bird and they spit at the dog. Hey, wasn’t there a time when Dennis and Charlie were mistaken for Lizards…Lot Lizards? Frank snorted again, wobbling with grunty laughter that sounded more warthog than frog so he changed it to a croak.

“What is he babbling and honking about?”

Frank blinks at the bar and all the animals are staring at him with wide eyes. The cat still looks a little disgusted.

“How the hell are we meant to know?”

“So,” the bird claps her wings together, “You guys ready to get the hell out of here?”

The cat jumps gracefully from its stool, grabs its jacket. “Damn right.”

“We can’t just leave Frank here,” the rat protests with a high shriek.

“If you want to stay here with him, buddy, be our guest.” The cat says as it moves behind the dog and puts its paws on its shoulders and purrs in its ear; “You’re ready to get out of here, aren’t you Mac?”

The dog nods eagerly but then its eyes grow wide and it looks at the rat. “Shouldn’t we stay in on this one, guys? We don’t wanna turn up here in the morning and Frank be fucking dead. Think of the mess.”

Dennis huffs, “Damn it, Mac,” but it isn’t hostile for a change and the cat sits back down. “You’re right. I don’t wanna clean up that shit in the morning. It’d be gross.”

“Gross,” Dee chirps in agreement, sliding back to perch behind the bar.

“Guess we’re here for lock in ‘til Frank starts talking human again,” the rat hums as the bird starts getting out shot glasses.

They immediately all start arguing about what alcohol they want to shot first.

Frank’s not talking human? That ain’t right. Their conversation has quickly descended once again into meows, barks, squeaks and squawks.

They think they will be here a long time waiting for Frank to start talking human, but as the argument grows louder and the dog is yapping and the rat is shrieking and the bird is flapping and the cat is hissing and Frank wonders if they know that in actual fact, it’s going to be Frank waiting for _them_ to stop sounding like a gang of goddamn animals. And who knows how long that’s gunna take? Frank’s still sitting here as a goddamn frog.

Though there could be worse things than being Froggy, he figures. After all, it’s better than having donkey-brains.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, guys? I don't know where this came from. I can't believe I've been watching Always Sunny for 8 years and this is the fic I decided to be my first. Ah well, what can you do?
> 
> If y'all hadn't guessed, this is based on that incredible theory from years ago that Frank is really the only human in the show and that the gang are his pets; a rat (Charlie), a bird (Sweet Dee), a cat (Dennis) and a dog (Mac). I've changed the theory up a bit and given it an into-the-show-it-goes twist, because it is remarkable how the gang can fit into those animals' personalities. I'm not sure yet how the next chapter is going to work; probably more of a character study because these terrible humans are so much fun to try and analyze (or horrifying, as Dee's psychiatrist found out).
> 
> Anyways, hope you enjoyed! Please let me know what you thought! Kudos, bookmarks, comments are life. I love them more than Charlie loves frolicking naked in the sewers. 
> 
> Also I totally angled this towards Dennis being so mean to Mac in S13 because he's got some kind of insecure jealous thing going on because Mac is free of more than just the closet, so I've tagged as hinted MacDennis but interpret it how you will.


End file.
